Gartner Like A Boss Itsm Weekly The Podcast Episode 73

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Gartner, Like A Boss! - ITSM Weekly The Podcast (Episode 73)

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Transcription:
ITSM Weekly, the podcast bringing you news, insight analysis and information from the world of IT service management. Your hosts, Matthew Hooper, Chris Dancy and Matt Beran. IT Service Management Weekly. The podcast starts now.

Hornbill's very proud to be sponsoring our favorite show: ITSM Weekly, the podcast. Hornbill support works enables ITSM with the human touch, helping service desks to deliver a better customer service experience. If you don't know about Hornbill, look out for the ITSM extreme makeover, where, alongside our partners, we'll be demonstrating the value of effective IT service management to the entire community.

Proving your worth, that's the future of the service desk. Visit us at Hornbill.com.

Welcome to ITSM weekly, the podcast, a very special podcast brought to you by Hornbill Software. We'd like to send a big shout out to Hornbill. I know you just heard their intro, but a big shout out. Hornbill did what I was unable to do through my begging and pleading, and actually made it possible for our today's guests, esteemed guests. I guess it official.

We've talked to Jeff Brooks before, but he wasn't anointed at that point. I'd like to welcome to Mr. Jarod Greene and Mr. Jeff Brooks to the show from Gartner. So guys, we've got Gartner on the show now. I mean, it's not, you aren't Gartner. I mean, you are Jeff and Jarod. How are you feeling?

It's a really exciting time. We've got some great research stuffs that we're working on. We're really tracking the service desk market, talking to vendors, talking to clients all the time, and always expanding our body of knowledge as well as being able to provide our clients with the kind of direction that they needed to solve their technology solutions.

And specifically, how do you feel about being on the podcast?

You know, I really enjoyed the last time I did it. I think it's a great avenue to get up there and discuss the kinds of topics people want to know about. You know, the growth of the listeners over the big year that you guys have been doing. This has been phenomenal, and I think any bit of information that people can get their hands on, helps them make better decisions about what they're doing.

I know that we may get into talking about how do you select which bits of information? But I do think it's important that you at least have that knowledge out there? That information that you can at least listen to or learn from it and then decide whether or not you're gonna use that.

You knew he was talking this podcast, ITSMWP?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jeff, I was talking to someone the other day. They said, do you know Jeff Brooks? And I said I would consider Jeff Brooks to be a FOC. And they said, what? I said, Friend of Chris. You know Little FOCers. Because I think you're just such a phenomenal person I was so happy to hear that you joined Gartner.

Plus, I mean, it's the dream job for everyone. Now Mr. Greene, that's a completely a different situation. I've had a chance to speak with him a few times on the phone, and I'm a rabid, rabid fan.

You made quite a stir when you Tweeted out about the retirement of the IT service management, service desk magic quadrant. And I think it might have been back in April. It got a lot of people's attention; I know it's one thing that I get asked about most. But so many people have no idea what that means, or even about the life cycle of a magic quadrant.

Could you shed some light on the life cycle of a magic quadrant and specifically around the IT service management measure quadrant?

Yes, as far as insight into the magic quadrant being retired, we want to have people understand is that we still see the IT service desk as a viable and mature market, you know, where we look at the market data from 2010. We're talking about a 1.3 billion dollar market. There are well over 100 vendors who provide capable tools that our clients pay attention to.

We actively track their activities as best as we can. What happened, tied to service desk tools over the past 15, 20 years is that they've become very commoditized. You can see that from a core functional standpoint, incident, problem, basic change management, self service knowledge management. The tools are doing very similar things.

There's little differentiation in the solutions from a service desk perspective.

Part of that is because a lot of client's attention is focused more on CNDB, service catalog, project portfolio management. And they're looking at how service desk integrates into those pieces, more so then their looking at stand alone service desk. And so with CNDB and those other technologies driving the buying decisions, you know, we wanted to put out research that reflected that trend.

We're seeing more organizations purchase in a sweet base capacity, more so than best of breeds. No one's mixing and matching service desk with change management, with release management. They're buying one suite from one vendor and we wanted our research to reflect that activity. So, when you look at the magic quadrant over the last four years, or at least in the time since I've been involved, you know, inclusion criteria was always basic incident, problem change, inventory, self service, knowledge management, service request management.

You needed four of those to get in, you needed to show up on short list, and you needed to deal primarily in enterprise. Well, what happened was that a lot of vendors meet that criteria. And so, you know, there's lower barriers of entry in the service desk space. There's a little market consolidation.

It's close to 100% saturation in terms of users who have a service desk. And, you know, all those factors are telling us that we needed to find a way to meet our clients' needs based on the types of decisions they were making. So again, consolidation or excuse me, commoditization can train the distribution of how vendors are traced in the quadrant.

You saw that vendors tended to be the same year to year. And so, again, we just wanted to refresh the way we thought about this. And again, it doesn't mean that the service desk market is dead. You know, we certainly hope not. Jeff and I were hired to cover the space. So, you know, if that is the case, we were told something different and need to have a conversation with someone.

But, you know, we're gonna spend a lot of time focused on service desk metrics, best practices, stellar vendors, the trends, integrations, intersections. And really helping client optimize both cost and inner resources.

So, we know you guys love the magic quadrant so much. So we want to continue to talk about it, right?

That's nice.

And you think that you're going to dial up restrictions for getting on there to be more stringent or less stringent so that you're getting more vendor selection or you're getting less. Specific to what I've been doing as far as social media and the service desk is concerned. I just wanted to provide a voice that was somewhat of a challenge of conventional wisdom.

So, we're looking at some IT services desk's best practices. You talk about the way things have been done in the past through traditional collaboration tools like email, like chat, like cookies, like blogs. And you know, while those are inherently social solutions. We'll talk about sort of new social media. A lot of people look at it as, you know, the cool thing or the hot thing.

And you know, I don't want to look at it from that lens. I want to look at it as a vehicle that will foster engagement between the IT department and its end users. And so we want to do that through the use of social media and engage users in a way that they're comfortable with, that they're familiar with; and quite frankly expect IT to provide.

When we talk about the advent of Facebook, how many users are on that, and Twitter, and LinkedIn, and any other social media platform, you can certainly see that the interest is there and you can certainly see that a lot of solutions are now being designed to incorporate some of those social features and functions.

I don't expect the service desk to not follow in that particular direction. They put out a SPA that you know, over the next four or five years is that these functions, these social functions, are going to be standard.

And so the older outdated approaches we have about, you know, sending that tech email every Friday, or you know, surveying end users via e-mail. That's going to change a little bit and at the same time we'll be able to solicit data and feedback that gives us the truer, you know, so to speak, voice of the customer. It's going to allow the IT department to make some better decisions.

So, I'm excited about that and again. I wanted people to take away, sort of what you can do with social. Understand that it's not a threat to productivity. Understand how to leverage it, understand sort of what your requirements are from a security perspective, from a governance perspective. And you know look to write a lot to that over the next few months or so.

So please be on the lookout for that.

Okay, enough magic quadrant. So, maybe, Jeff, since you're new, well relatively new to, how long have you been at Gartner now, Jeff?

Three months.

Three months.

Well you made it past your probationary period.

There you go. You're getting insured now, so.

Can you talk a little bit about like the life cycle of research papers, and like how you're interfacing with the community. And how you interface with service desk folks. And how, like, to talk about the life cycle of the research data.

Sure. So a lot of people may not understand exactly what a research analyst at a tech firm like Gartner does. I had the pleasure of meeting up with my parents. And my mother looks at me and says, "Do you like your job?" She says, "What do you do?" Well, I you know, try to tell people what they should be doing for their business.

And she goes, "I don't understand. Why wouldn't they just go on the internet and Google?" And I looked at her and said, "That's true." And we were sitting at a restaurant and she said, "You know, your dad went to Yahoo and looked up this restaurant and you know looked at the review and said that we should go there. And I looked her and I said, "What if the person who wrote that review was psychotic?

How do you get that information?" The thing about being an analyst is that it's not just looking at data, it's taking the data and then looking at what's going to happen and one of the trends from the data, those of you who know me know that I love metrics and the numbers because there's no emotion in the metrics easy to say, "Here's my base line.

Here's where I'm going". Well, an analyst is the same thing. Most people relate to a financial analyst. You look at Jim Crane of Trent Kramer on the TV and he's banging telling you to buy this, buy that. He's doing the same thing that we're trying to do. And he's getting data the same way that we're doing it.

So we're talking to clients. Jarod and I are taking inquiries a day. The service desk inquiries is one of the most frequent inquiries we get. They come to us. We'll do about 1,400 between us in a year. And that's client calling us asking all kinds of questions, "What tool should I buy? Here's a shortlist."

How do I decide?" "What should I be paying?" "What's the best structure?" "How do I make my SLAs work?" "I'm outsourcing. I'm insourcing. What do I do?" "How do I get data from A to B?" And we take that and we advise based on the collective Gartner experience and research and data and then we continue to take that information to develop new research from there.

So a question that comes up that we're able to answer may lead to a research note where we get together and say, "You know this was a question I had on a inquiry. I'm going to have to do with the best structure for SLAs." And so we'll get with other analysts and discuss that and say, "What have you seen?" "You know, what's your experience?"

"What do the research notes say?" And together, we build that. We've also got full departments that are solely responsible for collecting data or probably the data. So, we have market share data that we look at. Or that market share data we're able to draw trend lines to say, "Here's where we think the market's going." So, drawing that right now. We're frantically working on vendor landscape documents as well as looking at proliferation of the sassed appointed model for service desk tools.

That's something that everybody is aware of in, even in the past ten days, looking at market data and we found some things that are fairly interesting, you know, are shocking and were able to accurately say, "Here's where this market is going to be dealt with. When vendors look at that, they're going to say, "Huh, I'm not doing that.

Maybe I need to be doing doing that."

So in some ways are you wagging the dog?

Yes, and it's not because that's our push to do it, it's because we're taking that collective of information and letting clients know here's where, here's where the industry the market and the trend is going, you can go that way or you can do your own thing. We often hear people who, you know, everybody we talk to is unique and different and they're doing it their own way.

Right.

And all we can say is, well here's what the rest of the industry is doing and that industry has grown X percentage. You can do it your own way.

Right.

But we can't really say with any certainty what's going to happen to you.

Right. I think it's interesting your position around looking at the data. And speaking with Jarod a few times he explained to me a little bit about the number of clients that Gartner has, and how that helps you guys just by understanding what their needs are. And what types of questions they're asking.

But, you know, it's really interesting when you start to think about. I mean, I've read, I was fortunate enough to read two of your white papers. One on service management community. I'll put a link into the show notes to that where you can get a hold of that and one on socializing the service desk.

I think those were altered by each of you. And some of that stuff was, you know, a little predictive in there but I felt that it was safe predictive. And I don't mean safe as in a bad way. People hear me say, oh that's a safe bet. And I don't mean that in a way. But you really can't tell people, "Drop everything you have and build a time machine," either.

How do you responsibly draw that line? Is it something you'd know inside? Do you have a committee you run it by? I mean there's a fine line between being really helpful and forward thinking, and being just psychotic.

Well, I think Gartner's done a great job in being more open. I can tell you, I've been with Gartner for seven years now, and I remember when I started there was just Gartner.com and you could access a white paper or you could read it and you know, you can also set up an appointment with an analyst. In that time, though, I've seen that we've moved to being more open.

We have a blog network. A lot of my colleagues blog within the Gartner network. There's a lot of analysts on Twitter. You talk about, you know, the magic quadrant, a sort of announcement happening on Twitter, it wasn't on purpose. It's just something I wanted to bring to attention in the fastest way possible them and when you talk again about social media.

That was the fastest emotional appropriate way to do it. And vendors have been notified to that point, so no big deal here. But to the point about being open. You know, a lot of my colleagues, you know Nicole Wall, George Spaphor, and Jeff are on Twitter. A lot of the newer analysts I've noticed are on.

And we talk, and we engage. And we try to be open. Now if someone has a question. Someone wants to start a dialogue always like to be open and engaged in that context. So I just think that, you know, we can all benefit from that. If we can go to where our customers are, or go to where the IT's and community is.

And engage in discussion. I think we'll be richer in our knowledge, you know, from that experience. There's no harm to happen in that space again. We're all here to contribute, to be a part of something, and to be able to help each other out. It just so happens that the social media sites or where that is.

And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that. I want to be someone who contributes as well as someone who can take some things away, which I do quite often.

You know, one of the things though. I always struggle with this, you know the world's full of opinions, right? So you have all these inputs and we all work with data. So we know what it looks like. And you can sometimes look at it in certain ways. So, how do you signal out that the opinion noise that comes in with a lot of the perspective.

Sometimes you see, or hearing, or having to overcome that with, you know, quantifiable metrics. Because you know metrics can be two different pictures just depending on who's telling the story and what predisposed biases you have in the audience, right?

So, Gartner has got a dedication to what we call fact based research. And within our notes, when relevant, we've got notes sections and evidence sections. So people who've seen Gartner research will see that when possible, and when relevant we'll reference where the data comes from. You're right. I mean I can take two point on a line, two points and draw a line and say here's my trend.

But we try to not do that. We try to take the collective of information and put it together. So, you know, upcoming notes, especially ones that I'll do, people who have read things from me are used to seeing charts and graphs and notes that I'll be putting out are going to have a dedication to having that information.

And I'll put a chart and it's going to show what the definition. And I'm going to put my analysis of it. But anybody reading that is also free to look at that chart, and make it say whatever they wanted to say. It's very hard to convince somebody that the sky is green if it looks blue to them. So people at some point have to also take responsibility.

It sort of goes back to the magic quadrant. One of the things we deal with is. You guys are telling the magic quadrant, "How do I pick a vendor?"

I think that question is the problem.

Right.

I love it.

And yet the signal to noise ratio can be a little difficult to deal with, but I find myself, more times than not, going back to the customer. You know, if you can look at the customer, someone who really doesn't have an ulterior motive, right, their objectives are to meet demands of the business.

And how they go about it. You know, they need guidance. They need guidance specific to their industry. They need guidance around what their, you know, specific or vertical challenges are. And what we want to do as analysts provide that. From dealing with a wide range of clients who fit that profile. I think I use that, you know, I get to sit in a privileged position whereby I'm talking to six or seven hundred clients a year.

You know, all shapes, all sizes, all verticals. And then talking to them getting an understanding of, again their challenges, their objectives, what they're looking at, what they're hearing from vendors, what they're getting as far as price is concerned. That drives my research it makes me knowledgeable of that space.

So when someone else comes to ask. You know, I can mention them. I can say I just talked to a hospital, right. I just talked to a government organization. So let me give you some insight in what their challenges are. And they respond really well of that. Because at the end of the day they just want to know that someone else has a challenge.

Someone else is challenge, or someone else has accomplished what they're looking to. They just want some guidance on how that's done. So, you know, I tend to sort of, you know, not follow that guidance, you know, blindly. I tend not to go by sort of what I'm seeing other analysts respond to. I always go back to our client base.

And really get a sense what they're doing. And that's true as far as I'm concerned. So, that really helps me be tuned with the noise out with so much, with so much out there.

There's a fine line between an analyst and a consultative roll. And I think you just kind of described it to me. If someone says to you, lend me another five flavors of ice cream that I can have. Or you could say to them before I take you in the store, let's talk about the different things you will see and enjoy.

I mean, it scares me, when people say, "I don't have a quadrant, how am I going to pick software?" You know, without DNA, I mean how would you get kids? You know, come on. At some point it's natural.

One of the challenges we face, Chris, is that, people need to understand that we're analyzing and presenting information. Gartner is vendor neutral. If someone calls me up and says "Here is 3, which one do I pick?" I'm not going to tell them which one to pick. I'm going to ask questions to them. "What do you need?"

"What's the plot for?" "How big?" This one is good because of this. This one is good because of this. This one is good because of this. Take a demo, look at it, get a sandbox. You have to evaluate yourself and that again ties back to, you can't look at one piece of data and say "Ah ha!"

Right.

So, I'm going to take this one piece of data and I'm going to become a world class support organization. And we get that. That inquiry comes in. How do I become world class support? Well, in a half hour inquiry, we can't really help you with that. We can get you going, and we can point you to research. But there is a library of knowledge and resources that you need to look at, to build that.

You've got to take some responsibility in there. We're going to help guide you. We can help a firm on whether or not you're going in the right direction. What you've been told. Because a lot of times people come to us with questions of, this was something I was told. Is that true or not, we can usually say.

"You know, it can be true. Here's the situation."

And for any organization I'd say that's reevaluating their ITSM ambitions. One piece of advice I'd say to do is, you know, start with your processes. You know, your tools are going to change. You know, we talk to organizations and they are recycling tools every four to five years. They are moving on to a new vendor and for whatever reason no one makes the connection that, you know, it's not the technology that wasn't able to achieve excellence.

It was the process and it was the people. And the technology is there to automate your processes and make life easier for your people. If you don't have the right people in place to take advantage of that, you don't have the right, processes in place to automate? You're going to automate bad processes that people are going to struggle with.

So, you're not going to be able to do it and technology isn't the answer. You know, Jeff and I will get on the phone with many clients, and they believe that if they purchase a new tool because the one they have is limited, the one they have is unstable, the one they have doesn't have a nice user interface, then they're going to get left behind.

They won't be able to complete this idol initiative. And that's just simply not the case. We want organizations to start with process. And that would be the advice we'd have organizations walk away with. We don't talk about vendors until we have a process discussion. You know, someone wants to get on the phone and say, "What vendor is going to help me achieve, you know, heights of excellence?" We don't have an answer for you.

You know, we can talk to you about process. So that's the advice we'd have organizations walk away with. I think the other points to make here is that, you know, Jeff and I, you know, as part of a research community of 750 or 775 research analysts, really benefit from being able to collaborate with one another. Our research meetings are spirited.

We often collaborate, you know, you'll see in research papers. But that's the result of a lot of internal discussion. So, we'll have a Monday meeting, a Tuesday meeting, and then you have the opportunity to participate in other meetings outside of your particular space, and you know, that's really the value of Gartner. Because you can go into other areas, but essentially we're all T-shaped analysts.

whereby you want to be broad across one area, and deep in one area in particular. So we're broad across the IT operations management space, but we're deep in IT service desk. And we spend, you know, a large part of our day head down in IT service desk.

And so that allows us to be the experts in that particular area. We don't have to be light in any other particular space. We can focus on the challenges specific to service desk. And be comfortable that we're very knowledgeable and can provide specific and poignant guidance. And if we need to stop and recommend the conversation with another analyst that's deeper in CNDB, deeper in application life cycle management, deeper in release management, project management, we have the capability to do that.

We can leverage 3 or 4 colleagues who can step right in and pick that conversation up where it left off. And there's no drop off in quality. So that's really the value that we want to be able to provide. We want to be able to provide value in terms of getting that call, or that inquiry completed quickly.

Because this has been a big push from us, and I think that's why you see a lot of analysts, again, around the globe, you know, being able to respond to that type of demand, because our clients need us and we want to be here to meet that.

I wish you would do more on Twitter, Jeff, because what you do put on Twitter is frighteningly exciting. And you look at someone like George, you know, who I respect immensely is absolutely, I'm pretty sure he's probably a Mensa member and you know, and he's tweeting all day long, you know, little tidbits of information.

But I know, like you said, it's a fine line. I just think you are so approachable, and Jarod is so approachable, it really could change things for folks, but that's just my opinion.

If I can get more than 47 followers, then I'll see about tweeting more. I don't have a big followings.

One of the things to add to Jarod's points about the, you know, people aren't clients. The thing that people have a hard time wrapping their head around and even as a new analyst, when I first came on board.

Understanding that what Jarod and I say is the IP of Gartner. We can't just give it away and we've got a manager who has to remind us of that. You know, we say "Hey, you know I'd like to go give a presentation at a local meeting. What do you think about that?" Well, what are you going to say? And the Podcast is a good example.

And it's not that we don't want to be involved, but we've got a business manager who looks at it and says, "What happens for Gartner?"

Because, you know, you can't go to Microsoft and say, "Hey, Microsoft. Give me a copy off this 2010." They're going to say well, you got to buy it, or what's in it for me? And because what we have is information, I think, you know Since it's not tangible like a shrink-wrapped product, people have a harder time wrapping their heads around it.

But that's the reality, is, clients, you know, are paying for that intellectual property. The data that we collect is our data, and we compile it, and we present it. So, it's difficult for people to understand that and even for me. I sort of got my head around that now. But it does become difficult if you're not a client.

I understand it completely, and I've talked to both of you extensively offline about this. And I think if you look at the different analyst firms out there, they're all handling it radically different right now. Around what's IP, protected IP, paid IP, paid walls. It's all very, very different, and I appreciate both sides of it.

I guess if I can share with you my point of view, because you both have had time I guess one-on-one with me, is I find that when I'm, do, give away the farm, I'm forced to plow new land. And it's that forcing to plow new land that keeps me, keeps my knowledge and the knowledge I have for people who are paying for my knowledge, interested in eating my vegetables.

Now I could, you know, live on the farm and not give it away and sell the corn, but because I'm constantly giving it away, and I see everybody is stealing it, right? There's more stuff online about social IT now then you can shake a stick at.

Well, that was cute 18 months ago. I'm over it.

The bigger difference is who owns the farm. In our case it's not Jarod and I.

You get to own your farm so it's a little bit easier but

Right.

I definitely see your point.

Right.

And we, you know, appreciate that.

That's just how I feel. I understand the position that Gartner's in and I respect it immensely. Gartner's taken time to address many of my concerns. I put a link in the show notes. When I first started three years ago, I had a question about how the magic quadrant was even created, and they wrote an entire blog post around it.

And, you know, again I'll put a link of that in the show notes. I mean, they're very responsive in the fact that you guys are on Twitter and sharing information. You look at George Baford and some of the others. You've done a remarkable job. I guess kind of to wrap up the show, beause we did have five points we want to get across to the folks.

People who are looking possibly at their IT service management ambitions, and your views on a revamped quadrant around a broader picture, were very enlightening. I think it's a pretty scary time that there's so much going on, technology. And people are always saying, "Technology is changing so fast." And I need to remind people, that you know we are in the future.

This is Star Trek-type stuff that's happening, and our users are coming in more empowered and scarier than ever before. What types of things, I mean, I don't want to get into you guys giving away the farm? But can you give our listeners at least, you know, some things to think about.

Sure. Yeah, I usually start these conversations with something simple. This isn't giving away the farm at all. I think this is well understood, but, you know, we'll get into a conversation with the client about: What tool should I buy? What tool should I buy? What tool should I buy? And, we have to stop and ask them a question about process.

We have to stop and ask them a question about maturity. You have to stop and ask them a question about their objectives. What do they expect to do with this new tool that they can't do with their old tool? And as you start to peel that onion back a little bit, you find that there's some process issues that they need to address.

There's some organizational issues they need to address. And we try to get the conversation refocused in those areas. Because, you know, we talk about turnaround for server desk tools and churn rate. Tools are being replaced every three to four years and so, you don't see that in other areas. You don't see that in CRM for instance, you don't see that

we are paid. So, when we look at service desk. It's why is there such a high rated change here? And, you know it's bad process. And so, if you were going to undertake an ITSM ambition right now. You really need to take a hard look at process. Make sure you understand what's your business objectives are and then how you're going to align your ITSM strategy to those business objectives so that you can demonstrate value.

It 's really, you say, a scary time right now. But we look at it as a buyer's market, and we talk about this level of commodization. You get your processes in order and it makes your tool selection process, you know, that much easier. So, that's really where my advice typically starts in these conversations.

And if folks that want to talk process, we can spend the 25 minutes talking tools. But, you know, I'd much rather, you know, have them start with that type of conversation and make the tool more meaningful.

I like it. So, tighten up the ship.

So I have a question about your structure, then. You guys are both in what's called IT operations, right?

That's correct.

So, if that is the key there, then it's the process and you guys are also then supporting IT service management. What we're hearing in the industry is this needs to start way upstream. You know, where is your counterpart in the application life cycle and other parts of the business structure and business organization side of you know, Gartner's analysts.

Do you have a direct line into those folks?

Right. We do. And I think that's the beauty of Gartner. And it really comes down to there being 775 analysts we have.

Wow.

So there's different analysts in different places. I really enjoy being the person that can point people to those different analysts. So, if you come and say that we really have a question on right-sizing itill, I can point you to George. If there's a question you have on an application life cycle management, I can point you the five or six analysts we have that are covering that topic all over the globe, you know, specific to your region your challenges.

Sweet

So, that's what we like to do. We want to get to the point where we can all be sort of specific. We talk about the concept of a T-shaped analyst, social broad across the top, and then deep in one area. Jeff and I are deep in service desk. But we're broad across the INO space, so if we need to direct you to the people who are deep in those, we'll certainly do that.

And that's really the value of the Gartner subscription is that you don't just get just Jeff and I, you get to access to 775 people. But we love just Jeff and you.

You know, I want to add on to what you're always saying on the question about the ambitions over the next twelve months. I'll give you guys a bit of the form. You know DevOps is one of the things that people are going to be looking at. You know, if you're not familiar with what it is, Chris would put a link in, Google it, go take a look at what DevOps is about.

I personally think that what Malcolm Fry's been doing for the last, I guess 18 months now or about a year: going around and telling everybody, "Listen. Idle is heavy duty. Don't go try and do the whole thing right away." I think that's one of the best things to happen for ITSM in awhile.

We get inquiries from people who call us up and say, "Hey I wanted to implement the auto framework. And I want to get it done by the end of September. What do you think?" Well, you think you're crazy. You are not going to be able to do it. You've got to start small; decide where you're going to go. So, a lot of people are looking for direction as far as, where do I start?

Start with incident management. If you can get that working, focus on problem. I think problem management, as far as people's ambitions over the next 12-18 months, is going to be one of the key things. We're going to see lots of research and lots of chatter come out about proactive support: being able to stop issues before they arise.

And that's only going to come from real problem management. Which is something we all say we do, but very few organizations really successfully implement a problem management process and strategy. So I think that is one of the big things that we'll see.

Interestingly enough, Jarod, I just saw an email this morning from HDI saying they've launched a new class just on that concept of problems.

And I swear I didn't actually see that email.

Do not confuse coincidence with blind, stupid luck when I'm speaking. Baron, I know you've to get off the phone. We've our time here. Did you want to ask the kids anything before we wrap up?

So, what's really cool is, you know, you said you've got 775 analysts, I mean and obviously you guys have a large breadth of knowledge. So, like you said, you know the T. I love that. It's a great metaphor. I love the image. What tools does Gartner give you guys to collaborate internally?

I've got to tread light.

That may be proprietary.

Well, no. So in terms of the tools we get. I mean we have methods in which we interact with each other. I put a tweet out a couple months back where I talked about, you know, what our appropriate policy is as far as emails and threads are concerned and how that is generated into research. I had an issue with it, but, you know, you I got over it.

Right, I know where my bread is buttered. But in terms of collaboration, I'd still say a lot of what we do is email based. And You know, that's a form or we can have a lot of discussions. When we move that into research there's a different sort of collaboration platform that we use. I've been using that one for a while.

The way in which our research is put through that life cycle, there's checks and balances within that research. So, Jeff and I can't just go write a research note and publish it tomorrow. We do need to go through some level of peer review, just to make sure it's in line with what our stances our on certain issues.

So, the tools isn't so much the issue for us. I sometimes feel as if we're slowed by the process, but we work through that as best as we can. I don't know if that answers you Baron, but I've just got to be sort of careful with it.

We've got Matt. We've got research communities.

Yeah.

So each week there's meetings. And the research communities are focused. So these meetings are an hour, hour and a half. And we get on, and we'll have topics that we discuss and it's a very collaborative effort to talk about the research that's ongoing.

And they're broken down, and there's different types of communities and research meetings. So, we don't have a whole lot of meetings that are just traditional meetings like, you know you'd shake your head, "Why do I have to go to this one?" Most of our meetings that we have are about research, and there are other analysts and talking about what's going on and what do we think and what are we seeing and what should we be writing about?

The other thing about the email is, there's a lot done via email, but one of the nice things that I've seen is that nobody just emails back "Yes" and hits "Reply all". When somebody replies to a thread that's a conversation where we're talking about a vendor rating and what do we think we should be doing. People add value to the e-mails, which is a big thing.

It's always been one of my pet peeves in an organization when someone hits "Reply all" and says, "Good job." Especially when a press release comes out. We don't have that phenomenon. People email and include content and value.

So you actually hire people with all 42 chromosomes.

Yes.

Alright. So, Jeff I wanted to point out real quick, even though I don't how many chromosomes people have. I probably am missing a couple. Jeff you pointed out. How many followers do you have on Twitter?

Like 47, not many.

You said you would Tweet more if you had more followers.

Yes.

So, let me just give you a piece of Chris Dancy research advice.

I knew this was going to come. I could feel it coming Jeff when you said it.

You might only have 47 followers, but I can guarantee you have the right 47. So, do it more. Because they're listening. And, you know, don't concentrate on how many people have found you, concentrate on who. And I'm a raging fan. I'm a bigger fan, I have to be honest, I'm a bigger fan of Jarod.

I don't know why, I just am. I think he's. I've often said, we're kind of like. I think there's some master plan. Jarod, do you remember I was talking about Trading Places?

Yeah, Billy Ray.

So, there's some master play on where Jarod is Eddie Murphy and I'm Dan Akroyd from Trading Places and the industry is pitting us against each other. But that's a whole other Podcast. Guys, thanks so much for being on the show. I'd like to thank Hornbill Software for providing the opportunity to have you guys on, we couldn't have done it without them obviously. And to each of you a major salute. It's hard when you are the leader and everyone's looking and you hanging on your every word. It's difficult to come onto something as irreverent as this show. And I do appreciate your time today.

I want that to be my ringtone, I'm totally doing that. So Fusion is this week. So if this is released this next week, Fusion is this week? But it's coming up in the future. That whole time portal thing really sucks. So, hopefully you'll all be there. Come and seek me out. I'm the tall, lanky, goofy-looking guy that's kind of gingery and has a faux-hawk that probably went out of style last year. So

And glasses that match his shoes.

Stop me, ask me questions, give me a hug.

No hug.

And a Flavor Saver.

Flavor Saver.

Yes. Don't you have a little fur thing on your lip.

Yeah, I've got a line down from my lip to my chin.

I thought those were called Flavor Savers.

Yeah, it's for when, you know, you're eating a steak. And some of it is there still, and you can just have a little dessert later.

Interesting.

Oh my god. I'm sorry. To everyone who listens to this podcast, I apologize. Seriously, I do think it would be a good time. And I was listening to Kinect Learning the podcast today and, you know, there's, of course, shilling some of the stuff that they're doing. I really hope that the expo hall is a little bit better than last time, but you know, we'll see how well it goes.

I am curious to see if we are going to get the worst of both worlds or the best of both worlds or somewhere in between. I am very curious.

Perfect example of IT and business not working together. So this story came out on The Consumerist, I believe, about Target. Their website went down when they switched off Amazon Services. So the perfect example of going from a cloud provider to in-house, and the effects that it can have. And I'm really curious, I wish I was I had a good relationship with Target, and knew a lot of people that I would definitely invite a bunch of them out to lunch because I want to hear the whole story behind it.

I'll put a link in the show notes.

I think that whole Target thing is a marketing scam.

Yeah, it might be too.

Well it all has this whole Italian designer situation going on. Misimu or whatever, I don't know. I don't know. Tar-jay.

Tar-jay. Ah, great explanation of CSI and when to put it in from Rob, the IT skeptic.

And if there is anyone who knows about when to put it in, it's Rob.

I didn't say that. It's really good video, I mean if you're a practitioner trying to do your own ITSM project, this is definitely something you want to look at before you get started because it'll really help you with the planning process. I think he hit it nail on the head. Everyone thinks about CSI as the last step and it totally makes sense to put it forward.

Gripe of the week: Retweets are out of control. Basically, if someone that I'm following is basically just doing a retweets and that's all they're doing, I am going to unfollow them. And new followers if you've got retweets as the first ten things on your list, I am not going to follow you.

So retweets dated or both?

Actually, if they put a comment in that is useful other than just "wow, nice, amazing, exciting". If they put on a comment that's valuable, definitely.

Yeah.

Or, if it something non-IT industry-related and they like spin it to be IT

Yeah.

Or customer service-related, I love that. That's fantastic.

Yeah, it's been on my nerves for sometime. These people who just plus one. I have a news for everyone out there in social media world: if I retweet you, that's like putting a plus one.

And then the other thing that's been ticking me off recently, is people apparently and G2G3 tweeted did this this morning, "People apparently don't realize that this is public. Someone dropped the f-bomb on Twitter yesterday, and I'm trying to pull up a professional reference for their account." Like he literally had a good reference, so I am sending a customer to his Twitter page.

I see the f-bomb. No. No more reference to you and you basically are losing business because I can't distribute that to people that I am a professional with.

Is that me?

No, it wasn't you. I am not going to call it out.

Yesterday, was the first I use the term FU, in a Tweet. But it was basically, I tweeted out, I'd like to add you to my professional network is the new FU.

Yeah I'd like to add you to my professional network. But you know how I feel about Linked in. And another did you guys see my Tweet about Captures.

Yes, I like Captures.

So, I realize the other day. I was sitting in front of a screen and it said, "Testing to see if you are human, answer this you know, Capture." And I thought there's got to be better ways to see if someone is human. I mean, Torring has a complete processor on this right. Then I tell if you retweet content with yourself mentioned in it.

That's the test on if you're human.

I like the logic test, too. Like, instead of just typing a word, say something like, "Which of these is closest to yellow?" Orange, red, blue.

That will be too hard for a heterosexual man. Now, David Racliffe uses that.

Shut up.

David Racliffe always has that, cause he's always like a horse has how many legs? You know, and then you type it in.

Yeah. Yeah.

That kind of thing. Yeah. I know.

But you don't want to ask color questions.

That makes more sense.

That would make people like Hooper hoop or too straight.

So, Hoop. That's what I want to do now. You just gave me the perfect idea for what I want to do. Instead of doing a Capture, I am going to tell people in order to prove you are really human, I want you to Tweet this. I want to make them virally market my company at the same time I prove they are human.

I like that. I like that.

Sale, Headline Market News. The business reports. Hooper's gonna take it away.

Well, I think headline news is very important today, because there is an independent research that is coming out, about how the financial services are going to have to change the way things are done in retail banking and in their investment operations.

There is a banking commission that wants to split the way that those two things are managed for banks. And this is huge and anybody how works in this space needs to pay attention, because if this goes through that means that all of your customer data, transactional data, all your reference points need to be completely, completely overhauled, and that's gonna be a total reform for IT, great for IT consultants but a nightmare for any CIO in the banking business.

So, I put the show notes in. This is something starting in the UK and I can't imagine that the rest of the world will not follow suit here if these guys go forward with this very interesting read. Other big news is, you know, productivity in the workforce; something that I have been doing a lot of research about recently and it's amazing to me how we have got into the point where we don't even know how to manage our own offices.

And how cleaning up our office could produce productivity is a headline in CIO.com. First of all I have to say, I think this is totally ridiculous article. But it made me laugh just to think and look at these people who are reporting on all the different aspects of how your cluttered life is causing you to be non-productive.

And whether it's because it's just too much paper, or not paper, or all that kind of stuff, the reality is that if you do not have good organizational skills, that clutter doesn't matter.

It's like Hoarder's CIO version or something?

OK.

You should see the picture. Again I'll put this link in the show notes. But its just funny. It totally looks like a hoarder's office. You know, stuff's all over the place. There's at least six coffee mugs in this picture. You know, you can tell they totally fabricated the picture just for the story headline.

No!

Or information or anything.

CIO.com fabricating a photo? How about info week? Click here if you'd like to skip this advertisement. Really? I want to see the people who don't skip the advertisement. I don't know. I am kind of on the fence with you, Hooper, on this one because I have been two ways in my life. Well let's not go there. I've been a very messy desk person.

And then I have been a very, very clean desk person. And I have to say, I, actually, I can't function if I have got too much junk around me. I think that's true of anybody, though. I mean, I don't think anybody would disagree with that. I am certainly one who manages organized chaos.

Well, I don't know. I see. Don't you see these people in the cubes and they have got that sign that says, "A messy desk is a sign of genius." Have you ever seen these people?

I have said it: that's me. I mean it is. People always say to me,"Boy, you know, your office must be immaculate." Because there's many things in my life that are very structured and very organized, but my desk is not usually it.

Yeah. The pictures in this article are terrible. All of them have CRT's or Dells from 1990. These are obviously super outdated.

Yeah, its like totally ridiculous.

Hooper, Hooper can we get a picture of your desk?

I'll put a picture of my desk in the show notes.

No, because if you go to servicehere.com/homeoffices, I've got Robin, myself and Baron have donated photos of our home offices for listeners. So, give me a picture, we can add to the list.

I could do that. But I am going to tell you that I'm in the process of redoing my office at home, in my basement, and it's going to be immaculate.

Do before and afters then.

I'll do before and afters. I'll I'll keep the listeners posted.

Do you have a man cave?

I have a man cave too.

Okay. We need pictures of your man cave.

Yep.

I would post pictures of my man cave, but

All right. We may have to take this off iTunes if you if you did.

My gripe of the week: tasks and calender events. Can someone please explain to me what the difference is? Why do we have a difference in these aspects? It just makes no sense to me.

Okay! So, have you read "Getting Things Done"?

No, I haven't had time.

Yeah, obviously. If you thought of ever getting things it done, its kind of moot point, isn't it?

So no. I don't know. I'm one of those people, I've talked about this before, I practice "bareback inbox," so I never have anything in my inbox. Or some people call it "zero inbox." But basically email that comes in, it gets replied to, gets deleted, whatever. But I use tasks as the things that I could work on if I didn't have anything in my inbox or on my calendar.

So literally, as appointments, like I've got 2 hours today between this podcast and an I Kiss MF meeting. So I've got tasks, by priority, that I could fill those two hours with, and as I do those tasks, I move them up to the calendar and fill those empty spots.

But do they have deadlines?

A task with a deadline is a calendar appointment. I think that's kind of your point, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

So to me a task is something that needs to get done. Just like, I need to get healthy, right? My BMI is 95, ask Chris Maget. So that's a task. If I actually was getting healthy, it would be an appointment.

I see the same thing, but I wish that someone would fix it. Like Google, they've got tasks and they've got calendar. I want the two to be integrated. And like, you know, how many people have gone through that? I need a tool that's going to record exactly how much time I spent doing something. There's no good way to do it.

Well, what's interesting is on all these mobile devices, there's all these "Don't forget the milk" and all these task apps.

Yeah.

So obviously, people in their minds, somehow differentiate the two. I know, for me, I'm not ashamed to say I still use Outlook, and the only way I can use Outlook is if I'm in my calendar view, and in calender under, you can see the tasks associated with each day.

Yeah.

So, it's almost like this is what you have to do: this is what you could do.

Right.

I'll put a screenshot of my calendar with my tasks. And hopefully there's nothing weird, because I won't take time to read it. I'm doing it now.

What do you use for screen capture?

What are you? What? See now, that embarrasses me. Okay, thank you because I've used all these old technology. I use Snagit.

Snagit. I think Snagit's great. TechSmith is a great company.

Yeah, that's not old, is it? I guess Jing is the new Snagit but that's not old. If it works, who cares if it's old.

Well, because, all you kids love all the cool stuff like Screensteps, and all this other nasty wit.

News get a purrrrr. Purrrr. Purr for me. News. Oh. Don't scare her. It's been just a little too long since I've been recording. Social media tools, the vendors and news: a new entry into the Helpdesk 2.0 market, Freshdesk. Pretty cool. Their marketing is all around an orange, which I totally think is like so radical.

But they're along the same lines. You take your Zendesk, your Sicily, your nanoRep, your Get Satisfaction, and now FreshDesk, UserVoice. They're all all these 2.0 helpdesk firms coming out. And the other day, I was being interviewed by someone, and actually, it's going to become a Forrester blog. I've been asked to blog for Forrester. Well probably up until they listen to this podcast.

And I'm doing the whole thing on this Help Desk 2.0, because what's really interesting is all the CIO's from these companies I speak to, they don't have the same like divisions, like, this is an incident, this is a request. They just have one thing like helping people. It's almost like, if Kirk Weasler and George from Pink had a lovechild, right?

It would be all warm and fuzzy, it would to want to help people, and would actually be productive. Because you can't have too much of one or the other, or you just sit around in a pow wow. So, yeah I'm really looking forward to it. On that same note, Zendesk just donated--did you guys see this, $1 million to a children's hospital in San Francisco.

That's fantastic.

I mean, I don't know you how you can out Scobal Scobal, but ZenDesk PR, and they just announced like, yesterday, phone integration. So over the top, over the top, over the top.

Yeah. If you haven't seen the phone integration yet, check it out. It's amazing.

Again, you know, this whole help desk 2.0 thing that I'm going to write for our friends over at the Big F, amazing. And then finally I just want to finish up with: check out Brazen: B-R-A-Z-E-N. It's a Facebook app. I don't want to go into their business model, but pretty cool. It's a Facebook app that logs into LinkedIn and creates an infographic of your resume.

So I will put a link to my resumed infographic up in the show notes. Very, very hot.

Did you hear the news about Whirl? You remember Whirl. It was more like a LinkedIn: geotagging, location-based but more topical. We talked about them before. So I had met the CEO before, Jeff Holden. Super nice guy. Pelago Systems. I was supposed to head to Chicago to do some Idle training. I had to do a little consulting.

I had to raise some cash. My kids are getting hungry.

I've seen pictures. They're starving.

I sent him a note on LinkedIn and I realized he had moved over to Groupon. And I said, "Oh, very interesting move for him." So I went to Whirl.com to see what was going on and who took over as CEO. Whirl was bought by Groupon. Geotagging, location-based services now bought and owned by Groupon. Can someone say hyper-local advertising?

Yeah. Hyper-local, you know, they've been talking about it. It's hardly going to happen. When iOS 5 launches in two weeks, and you were just talking about tasks, right Hooper?

Yep.

iOS 5 actually launches location-based tasks. So now tasks just aren't things you need to do with a date and time. They're things that will remind you when you get to places.

That's cool.

And that's an iOS 5 baked in. So people aren't looking at hyper local. Again, you come to one of my classes, oh, that's right, you get!

And then my gripe of the week: Creepy Twitter. You know, I don't know. There's some crazy stuff going on Twitter. I think I've somehow broke some type of threshold, where I have lots of random people I don't know asking me questions and things and I try not to do things. But I've written a blog which I'm going to release directly after the show today called "You're Mother Ruined You: Twitter and Self Promotions".

Basically, the concept is it's okay to toot your own horn, but, gosh darn it, know the notes to play. Because this idea of retweeting anything with your name in it, and we've talked about this before. Retweeting something in a non-native format just so has RT is basically theft. Retweeting something and adding "I really agree with you" basically defeats the purpose of a retweet.

Retweeting is "I really agree with you" without you saying it. Adding a plus one, all of these little joker type things that you're doing. Kids, your mother ruined you. If you're that starved for attention you don't need Twitter. You need help with self-esteem.

All right. Moving on.

You know, listeners, if you're not feeling bad about yourself right now then please rewind and listen again, and you'll feel it. Yeah. I don't know who does it. I do that all the time. I always RT things without adding anything else, because honestly it's like I'm sometimes looking for something that I think most people aren't looking for, but I just find it, you know, extremely interesting. So I just want to, you know, put some kind of message out.

Well, I think the way to do that, if you want, you should say to me, "Chris, that's cute. Do you feel this way? Do you have a solution for me?" The way to do that is you use the original Tweet as the link, because if you click on the time of any Tweet, you get a link to it. And then type what you think is the important salient point that you want to make about that tweet, and then use the link in that new tweet to the original tweet.

Don't use the RT and put a bunch of comment junk there. I've already seen the tweet, it's Twitter, we're all following the same people. It's like West Virginia, I'm not going go there. But come on, don't waste my time.

Agreed.

You know, "Why don't I have more followers?" Because you don't have anything original to say.

Sometimes, well, I think Vanessa Alvarez and Rodrigo Forez, I'm just like, "Get a Twitter room. For God's sakes! Get a Twitter. Room." Sorry, Hooper, I mean I love you. That's the reason I still follow, but come on, come on.

I disagree.

I agree with both. There's a fine line and you really have to judge it for yourself.

That's OK. It's why I manage two Twitter accounts. Sometimes I see things on the start-up world, marketing, you know, innovation stuff that probably most of my vigilant guy followers wouldn't follow and I try to retweet it to the, you know, that following, ITSMWP type stuff. I don't know.

Yeah, I think start up stuff is important important to ITSMWP listeners. Because, again, if you don't understand the concepts of agile business in 2011, and you're in service management, guess what? You're like the the new fax machine salesperson.

Yeah, but a lot of people don't, but they're still that way. Like, minimal viable product to me. It's something that we had maybe talked about in project management in some form like, you know, go with the vanilla, you know,get early wins. We talk about that crap all the time, but until you actually have to make the decision to keep saying no, no, no, you're pushing a product you that you actually hate.

It's a whole new game for me. So minimal viable product to me was a word, it was a concept and now it's my life, and I think it's like if I could have gone back to my years in building enterprise products and bringing more service management into the organization. If I had understood fundamentally what I understand now, I would have done such a better job.

I would have had so much more success. You gotta share those things and, for me to go find that original article and to highlight the salient points, ah, this guy did a good enough job. I'm just gonna throw it out.

You know what Hooper I just realized I feel bad. This is the I-need-a-hug Hooper that I'm talking to, isn't it?

No, I'm just saying, again, I think I'm going back to what I've said the last year and a half. Not everybody is at the level that Chris Dancy is at.

No, but I think, I think we all can agree, at least the people that listen to this show, and the people who are on the Twitters, they have moved along.

They have moved along. We're all slowly becoming like you. Just don't run so fast.

I'm not Forrest Gump.

All right so the last thing I'm brazen and then we've gotta wrap the show up, last thing I'm brazen is that they also game-ify it so basically by looking at your LinkedIn statistics, if you live in a state like, for instance I have a badge for healthy living, what a joke, right? But it's because I live in Colorado.

If you've got like certain time spans. You've worked at certain types of companies, you get like, mover and shaker badge. So, really, check out Brazen through Facebook, you will love it.

It's like Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "If you wanna look skinny, hang around fat people."

You know that's why you people seem smart listening to this podcast. All right so that's the news, hopefully we'll see everybody next week. Thanks guys. See you later.

Bye.

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